Amazon's announces "free" shipping I have been shopping on Amazon for over 3 years. When I buy books, music and DVDs, I buy on average $80 worth of entertainment. Today I received a order of 10 books. I used the "Wait until order is ready" service because I preordered Neil Gaiman's new book. The total for my books was $123.26 with shipping of $13.39 making
the grand total $136.65.
I was shopping Amazon tonight and saw their new free shipping notice. My first though was great! Then when I went to look for some books, I noticed the 20% off prices were no more. Now they are full price or 10%. I searched around and found the total for the books I just purchased using your new pricing. The grand total of my order would now
be $147.91 with free shipping. An increase of $11.26 or 8 percent.
I am a fan of Amazon but not a fan of their thinly veiled attempt to raise prices using the bait-and-switch approach taken from offline stores. Nothing is ever 'free.' I know Amazon wants to be profitable by Q4, but this pricing is too aggressive. The email for feedback is free-shipping@amazon.com. Voice your opinion about this offering. Is it warranted?
posted by lheiskell
on Jun 21, 2001 -
50 comments
I need your help in figuring out why I saw
two pop-up windows when visiting
Amazon.com several times in the past week: the usual one for Amazon's most recent promotion, and one for
one of their competitors. If you see a
DealTime pop-up ad while visiting Amazon.com, please help me figure out how it got there. I think something insideous might be going on, but I'm having difficulty re-acquiring the pop-up.
Please see more details inside if you're interested, otherwise you can ignore this. I'll post the results under a separate thread if they're interesting.
posted by dan_of_brainlog
on May 5, 2001 -
35 comments
Borders outsources online sales to Amazon.com The alliance, scheduled to be announced at a press conference in New York, is expected to involve Amazon effectively taking over the online operations of Borders, according to people familiar with the matter. Borders is expected to effectively exit from the online book-selling business, these people said. Further terms of the alliance couldn’t be learned, though Amazon is expected to receive promotion from Borders through its chain of off-line book stores.
posted by Brilliantcrank
on Apr 10, 2001 -
30 comments
"Uncontacted" tribe contacted in Javari region of Amazon
A team of Brazilian anthropologists has made contact with a group of indigenous people in the Amazon region. They had initially only wanted to learn about uncontacted groups indirectly, but chose to seek out this group to make sure they weren't being exploited by a neighboring group.
posted by rschram
on Apr 9, 2001 -
9 comments
A new JD Salinger Book! Just caught this on Amazon the other day. I haven't really heard anything about it, but it's worth a
pre-order at the least. Here's some
other information I've found. Along with the supposed introduction to the book...
I will write for us both, I believe, as Buddy is engaged elsewhere for an indefinite period of time. Surely sixty to eighty per cent of the time, to my eternal amusement and sorrow, that magnificent, elusive, comical lad is engaged elsewhere! As you must know in your hearts and bowels, we miss you all like sheer hell. Unfortunately, I am far from above hoping the case is vice versa.
posted by igloo
on Mar 6, 2001 -
6 comments
You thought Amazon's One-Click patent and following legal battle was bad...
Have you had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich lately? You did not cut off the crusts and crimp the edges together, now did you? If so, you just have infringed on
U.S. Patent 6,004,596 (currently owned by 'surprise'
Smucker).
From the patent: "The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter. "
Michigan's Albie Foods just sued to have the patent removed. Let's hope they win, or pbjs soon may become an act of civil disobedience...
posted by noom
on Mar 3, 2001 -
7 comments
Amazon expands again. Does anyone know a reason (other than accesibility to high bandwidth connections) that this wasn't implemented months ago?
posted by tdstone
on Feb 12, 2001 -
6 comments
Amazon.Pay? Amazon has a system to allow site owners and sellers of digital content to get paid....
posted by owillis
on Feb 5, 2001 -
76 comments
The Grinch who stole eBay? Here's a weird one; help cheerfully accepted. The link is to a search on eBay for Novatel Minstrel's; I decided I wanted to buy one. Everywhere I run the search from, I get substantially different results. Like, 2 answers vs 12.
I'd be interested to know if other people who hit the link see similar behavior... This smells weird... kinda like the Amazon differential pricing think, but I can't see a reason why...
posted by baylink
on Dec 8, 2000 -
8 comments
More Pseudo-Amazon Layout Fun It used to amaze me that people have entire careers based on ripping off others. Now it's just standard (I apologize for the thousandth post of an
amazon.com tabs comment). The site actually looks like the old Amazon interface hooked up with the current
Altavista site, and created some bizarre, overly-influenced mélange.
posted by Hankins
on Dec 3, 2000 -
12 comments
"They're closed" - After seeing millions of dollars worth of commercials for Amazon.com where they make fun of brick and mortar stores for closing at night, I go to their site today and find...... They're closed. Here's a
screen shot in case they open today. Sure, sites go down, but the wording seems a little odd considering....
posted by y6y6y6
on Nov 24, 2000 -
8 comments
union.amazon.com ? Customer service reps at Amazon.com are trying to form a union. Amazon says "We don't have unions at Amazon and don't really need them".
posted by owillis
on Nov 16, 2000 -
8 comments
The redesign blitzkrieg continues:
Webvan is getting a new look, complete with light influences from Aqua and - yes -
amazonesque tabs. As an added bonus, it won't work with Macs. I'm interested to see how this plays out.
posted by hijinx
on Oct 31, 2000 -
8 comments
Amazon dead by Mar 19, 2001 Just thought you like to know the exact time of death of Amazon.com That's according to Downside's Deathwatch is a cash-flow analysis. The death date is simply the day the company will run out of cash, based on their reported liquid assets and loss rate. When the cash runs out, something bad for stockholders has to happen.
posted by lagado
on Oct 23, 2000 -
31 comments
Give It Away? Seth Godin's book
Idea Virus is available for free on his website, but the book is ranked #973 on the
Amazon.com best-seller list (which means more than a few people are buying it anyway). Interesting...
posted by owillis
on Oct 8, 2000 -
9 comments
Barnes And Noble steps up for sloppy seconds. After Amazon elected not to renew their agreement with Yahoo, Barnes and Noble replaced the online bookseller as Yahoo's premier advertiser for books. It is uncertain as to whether or not Yahoo and BN have had the grueling discussion regarding the number of partners they've each shared in the past, but it looks like an optimistic relationship regardless.
posted by Hankins
on Sep 20, 2000 -
4 comments
I have no doubts that people will get exercise from watching
this workout video, but somehow, I don't think it's going to be aerobics. Check the reviews, I didn't even know there was a genre like this. This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen at Amazon, anyone seen anything weirder?
posted by mathowie
on Sep 16, 2000 -
13 comments
More Amazonian sneakery - Depending on a number of factors, among them the type of browser you are using, Amazon will charge you a different price for the same DVD. According to Amazon it's all in an effort to better serve the customer.
posted by Nyarlathotep
on Sep 6, 2000 -
16 comments
Does Amazon deserve my statistics? I knew
this was coming but I was hoping that it would all turn out for the better and Amazon would come to their senses. So the question is, are
Wish Lists worth my data? Will ownership of my spending habits, phone number, address, credit card, browsing habits, and email address become the new price for using the Internet as a consumer?
posted by Brilliantcrank
on Sep 5, 2000 -
3 comments
Amazon's new privacy policy makes any information you give them a saleable asset. I could have sworn that I saw a link to Amazon's new policy here on MeFi, but now I can't find it. Anyway, when I saw the link my first question was how the old and new policies differed. Then a friend pointed me at this CNNfn article. Whaddy think? Gives me the creeps...
posted by silusGROK
on Sep 4, 2000 -
4 comments
Amazon.com's new navigation Opened my mailbox and lookee-here, a message from Amazon.com's Jeff Bezo's for me? Yup. Looks like he's not only trying to push every product under the sun, but also acceptance of his company's new navigation.
posted by Christopher
on Aug 13, 2000 -
6 comments
Has
Amazon.com finally ditched the unsustainable and cluttered one-tab-per-store interface? And if so, is this how they react to their stock falling?
posted by tranquileye
on Jun 30, 2000 -
12 comments
Why tab based interfaces suck This site finally fell into interface hell. Originally they used tabs as navigation and still are now... BUT it doesn't work...
Watch... every ecommerce company that copied its interface will also fall into the same interface hell...
The others include ebags.com, urbanfetch and more....
posted by efader
on Apr 8, 2000 -
8 comments
